across the restless waves
breaking over the stones.
Coming to the Water
With the curse
curving the tongue
where the light depends on the wind
coming to the water
watching the light and listening to the wind
under the curse of the language.
Jill
Bialosky
COLD HEART
The slow drift of clouds
neglects the face of the sun,
and the snow keeps coming.
The less than tame wind dismantles it,
brushes the black branches
of a particular oak to one side
like a girl throwing back her hair.
The ice engraved in the crevices
of bark is your idea of sensual.
You would find it more than beautiful,
this wilderness where a pine
is the only thing in sight, green, unstripped.
Only you'd be obsessed with the lesser,
barer trees, how immense you'd feel
next to them, how gracious you'd become,
and the starlings, how they regroup
from tree to tree in one thick flock,
how they leave not one alone.
Sometimes the wind gets so crazy